Hemophobia
by Blue Mage Quartet
Summary: Pain on pain on play repeating. Everyone that has ever been close to Tsunade has ended up with their blood on her hands. Tsunade Centric. Oneshot.


**Hemophobia**

* * *

Tsunade had never been one for ninja weaponry.

She had learned the precise points—the nerves most vulnerable, most vital—to target with a senbon to produce immobility, even near death.

She had been instructed how wind speed and direction plus strength affected the terminal velocity of shuriken, and the most opportune times to throw one to kill mid-sentence.

The instructors had taught her the "proper" way to hold a kunai to an enemy shinobi's throat. To apply just enough _pressure _to nick the delicate skin and make them bleed.

She had been tutored in the way of the otsuchi, the sai, the kusarigama, and had learned how to fight (_spin pivot swing slash throw) _to protect her teammates and herself_._

They had informed her of the proper technique of the tanto- a delicate flick of the wrist combined with the mere forward thrust of the arm to impale the blade right through their stomach. Imparted upon her were the best methods for catching enemy ninja off guard, and then decapitating them with a masakari before they could scream. Her teachers had informed a Tsunade thirteen years old of the minimum amount of force that would enable one to drive a katana right through the chest.

Passed down to her was the ability to kill. _(maim torture crush murder)_

But with each new lesson came blood that would inevitably be spilt.

Tsunade wasn't much for blood.

Too often had the life force of loved ones stained her hands.

She had clutched the ravaged and torn corpse of her 12-year old brother Nawaki—not even a teenager—as his sightless hazel eyes stared at the sky, but saw nothing.

So much blood should not have come out of something so small. _(God there was so much.)_

His lower body had been blown completely off by the explosive trap, leaving bloody stumps where legs had once carried him everywhere enthusiastically. _(When he was excited, he would rock back and forth on his heels with boundless energy.)_

Angry burn marks blistered his entire body, the uniform charred into ragged holes that crumbled to ash as she cradled him._ (Nawaki had never liked fire.)_

She clutched her grandfather's necklace hard enough until the crystalline shards dug into her skin and she bled._ (Children should not have to fight a war.)_

Hot tears, propelled by rage and grief, cascaded endlessly down her cheeks._ (If only tears could bring him back.)_

She never thought she would ever cry as much as had that day again.

But then Dan had died.

A gaping hole had somehow _forced _its way onto his chest yet for some reason he was _smiling. _Smiling as he coughed and bloody trails burst forward from his lips.

Tsunade—older now, smarter, trained to heal and mend instead of break and rupture—had desperately fumbled as she groped for the wound and placed her delicate hands near it.

She willed the chakra coils in her arms to life, unbending and snapping forward like snakes after prey as the chakra gathered at her fingertips, boiling hot.

"Sho-shosenjutsu!" She had hissed through clenched teeth, her throat parched as the extremely high— nearly fatal—amount of chakra began to flow through her body and into his.

Yet all the cellular reparation and accelerated healing in the world could not restore a ruptured lung and damaged spine. He had been left to die hours before, red liquid fully saturating and encrusting the fabric in red ruin.

Dan had grasped at her face, his eyes glazing over as he told her that he loved her. And then he had died.

Her whole body had rocked back and forth, shuddering in grief as she howled out his name to unhearing ears. She could only stare, frozen, at the blood that began to puddle and overflow from her quivering palms.

The horrifically soft _splish-splash_ of her dripping tears mixing with his blood was the only thing she could hear.

It was only when they had taken the body away that Tsunade had noticed the yari—a spear with a two extra horizontal blades—lying in the dirt a few feet away.

The razor sharp spear points were a bright, bright red against the dull, dull earth.

Tsunade stumbled towards the discarded weapon, holding the haft before her. Something so simply constructed out of metal and wood, yet it was appalling how destructive it could be.

She furiously snapped the haft in half over her knees. She hurled both parts of the now useless weapon away from her as if she was scalded by touching them. Weapons had taken the most important people in the world away from her.

Tsunade could only hold their corpses in her hands as their blood soaked her clothes and seeped into her skin.

Tsunade was not one for ninja weaponry.

* * *

**Constructive criticism? Reviews? Advice from Naruto fanfic vets? Surprise me.**


End file.
